IMAGINE Poetry Reading

SEPTEMBER: Fall for Poetry

Marilyn Zelke-Windau, Georgia Ressmeyer & Maryann Hurtt

Marilyn Zelke-Windau

Marilyn Zelke-Windau is a former elementary school art teacher and a Wisconsin poet who enjoys painting with words. Her work has appeared in printed and online venues including Verse Wisconsin, Stoneboat, qarrtsiluni, Your Daily Poem, and several anthologies. A member of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets, her first chapbook Adventures in Paradise was published in 2014 by Finishing Line Press. Momentary Ordinary, a full length, illustrated manuscript, was published in December, 2014 by Pebblebrook Press.

On the Front Porch

It was a day of errands,a day of from here to there,of deposit and pick up,of chores, not visits.Driving down Monroe StreetI passed your house.It may have been your houseor it may have been your son’sor daughter’s house.At 25 miles per hour in the city,it was a quick glance.You were seated on the front porch,a full-facing, windowed front porch.Your hair was neat, cut short, prim.You had on a dark cardigan sweater,navy blue I think, unbuttoned,over a white Peter Pan collared blouse.I couldn’t see your hands.I couldn’t see your legs, your feet.You were very still, gazing,just gazing with a blank stareat the outside world:the world on Monroe Street.Not much action on Monroe Street—only cars passing, no pedestrians,no school children at 11AM on a Thursday.My thoughts of chores and errands paused.You stayed.You stayed on that porch with your quietness.Your vacant look echoed my daythrough Target, the bank drive-up window,Piggly Wiggly, and the post office.I deliberately retraced my routeon the way home.Your world had broadenedbecause you weren’t there.Mine had narrowedbecause for me you still were.

-- Marilyn Zelke-Windau

Georgia Ressmeyer

Georgia Ressmeyer, a New York native, spent her childhood summers swimming and sailing on Long Island’s North Fork. Since 1974 she has lived happily in Wisconsin, first as an attorney in Milwaukee, now as a poet in Sheboygan, where she lives three blocks from Lake Michigan. Twice a recipient of grants from the Wisconsin Arts Board, Ressmeyer has published fiction, numerous poems, and an award-winning poetry chapbook, Today I Threw My Watch Away (Finishing Line Press, 2010). Her first full-length poetry collection, Waiting to Sail, was published in 2014 by Black River Press. For more information see www.georgiaressmeyer.com.

Waiting to Sail II

Most summer mornings the wind slept in,lay on the bay’s floor till noon or laterunder a taut, reflective sheet that pleasedswimmers, water-skiers, skimmers ofrocks, but never Dad, who was a sailor.

Wherever he went near water, he madea detour to the shoreline or causeway,checked for breezes dimpling or ripplingthe surface—signs that wind had begunwiggling its toes nearby.

After lunch we might row unhurriedlyout to the sailboat, giving wind more timeto shake sleep off while we bailed, raisedthe sails, and in other ways prepared totranscend stillness.

We were wind’s dependents, never cursing,only praising, and paddled out to the bayon faith, if required, where we sat limp-sailed until wind deigned to unchain us.

Sometimes we sang jaunty songs to put windin the mood to propel us along on a steadybut not overpowering breeze, whicheventually it did, at least most of the time.

We liked to heel the boat on its side, sliceand slap the waves with our hull, feelsalt-spray on our skin, and be, at least fora few hours, as feral as wind can be

while the Old Salt—our dear old Dad,not old at all—issued commands to loosenor tighten the jib, duck our heads andswitch sides when he called “Hard-alee!”

Then he might lean back, look up at theburgee and say, “This is the life”—and itwas, and continues to be, for though hisbones are now cradled in a wooden casketunderground, his spirit still sails in us.

-- Georgia RessmeyerWaiting to Sail, Black River Press, 2014

Maryann Hurtt

Living almost equal distance between the Elkhart Lake library and the Ice Age La Budde Creek trailhead keeps Maryann Hurtt centered. She retired in the spring of 2014 after almost thirty years of hospice nursing. Now heart-deep in an Oklahoma Super Fund site, she is hearing and recording the voices of old lead miners, a mortician's wife, Quapaw Indians, William Clark's Nez Perce prisoner of war son, even the "voice" of a Ku Klux Klan cross. She will be reading at the Tar Creek Environmental Conference in the fall of 2015.

Receiving scholarships, Maryann studied poetry at Charles University in Prague, Fishtrap, and Breadloaf-Orion Environmental Conference. Her writing has been published in Free Verse, Fox Cry Review, Stoneboat, Echoes, Wisconsin People and Ideas, Wisconsin Poets' Calendar, Wisconsin Hospital Association and a few anthologies including The Cancer Poetry Project, Ariel, and Verse and Vision. While still practicing as a hospice nurse, she and Cynthia Frozena co-authored a book, Hospice Care Planning: An Interdisciplinary Guide.

The Patience of Orchids

the orchid I bought youlooked stunningin the Piggly Wiggly plant cornerat home it dazzledfor a little bitthen lost its purple bonanzait sat in the south windowthrough all the seasonskind of forlornafter such auspicious beginningswhen Valentine's dayrolled around once moreI see what may be could be a budtrying so hardthen three days after all the heart hooplablossoms againit's 10 below 0when I learn how to waitnever give updream purple